A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

sensibilities, such as in this instance: "Withluck and a measure of forgiveness I scribblepoems instead of wreaking havoc." Theunspoken presence here is the father andhis weaknesses, a ubiquitous danger andtemptation to be aware of.In Dreaming My Father's Body, PaulWilson carefully probes the reasons formoments of closeness as well as distancebetween his father and himself. WhileWilson seems to achieve a sense of understandingfor his father and his actions, Icannot help wondering about the nature ofthis understanding. The title of his volumeis revealing because through dreamingabout his father's presence, Wilson gainsonly insights into his own character. Thusthe blurb on the back cover asking "whywas it so difficult for his father to showaffection, why couldn't they talk about sexor express their feelings?" may give theimpression that Wilson achieves an understandingof his father. When the understandinghe achieves is one of his owncharacter and his own limitations andstrengths, only through these insights doeshe learn something about his father.Perhaps it is not as ironical as it firstseemed to me that in pursuing dreamsabout his father, Wilson finds out quite alot about his mother, who emerges as astrong presence throughout this volume.Rim Poems by Joseph McLeod consists ofsixteen mythopeic "Rim Poems" and hisuncollected poems from 1950 to 1990. Theformer are based on a quasi-Aboriginalmyth of the world's creation and the byproductof the trickster who is forced to dogood through humour and wit. What weget in the poems are not a re-telling of thismyth, but rather variations on life underthese mythological conditions. Even inthese sixteen poems a flaw in McLeod'spoetry is apparent that is even more in theforeground in the uncollected poems whichcover a period of forty years. Neither hisvoice, nor his approach towards the subjectmatters, nor the forms of his poems changevery much in Rim Poems. One could ofcourse say that such a consistency in poetryis admirable, but I found it too monotonous.While these poems work very well ontheir own, having them side by side maywork against their effectiveness and detractfrom what they do best, namely conveyMcLeod's responses to a world that has byand large rejected mythical explanations oflife.The term "safari" is a Swahili word meaninganything related to a journey and travelling.In Ghost Safari, Tom Marshall seemsto think back to the root of this word andtraces various of his journeys as well assome of the people that accompanied himboth in the flesh and in the spirit. Hereflects, however, not only on people andjourneys, but also on cultures and their histories.In a note to a poem on a journey toChina, Marshall remarks on the students'outspokenness on sex and politics in the"dusk of Tiananmen Square." It is chillingto learn that his journey took place twoyears before the Tiananmen massacre.Especially admirable is the ease with whichMarshall glides from the aesthetic mode ofthe poem to the documentary mode of proseor from the rhythm of the poetic line to thatof a prose passage. Perhaps it is this ease ofdrifting between modes, of merging themeven, that makes Marshall's poems particularlyforceful to our current sensibilities.Before I began reading Tom Henighan'sHome Planet, I expected a volume of genrepoetry, namely science fiction poetry, forthat is what Henighan is known for andwhat the blurb on the back coverannounces. All in all, I got that but also agood deal more. Most significant is his fineability to detect ironies in our attitudestowards technology and science fictionthemes. More than once, Henighan surprisedme with a tongue-in-cheek turn inthe last stanza of a poem or an uncannyself-awareness that threw new light on a131